JULES CRITTENDEN:

What do you call it when the ombudsman of the New York Times admits he made a mistake?

A good start.

New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame has initiated what we can only hope will be a trend in America’s holier-than-thou media — that overwhelming and influential part of our nation’s news business that feigns objectivity, fairness and interest in our national well-being while relentlessly pursuing partisan and destructively anti-American agendas.

Calame, in the throes of some inexplicable crisis of conscience, has admitted his newspaper was wrong to reveal a secret U.S. government program to monitor bank transactions of terrorists, and that he was not only wrong but hypocritical to defend it. He did not mention hopelessly lacking in perspective, but I’ll get to that.

Read the whole thing.

KEEP OUT THOSE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FROM THE SOUTH — BUILD A FENCE! At least, that seems to be what Mexicans think.

NEO-NEOCON IS OFF for the second al-Durah trial.

PLAYING MARSHALL MCLUHAN at Free Alabamastan. “Notice that none of the other people in the ad are shown from the waist down — they’re not wearing any pants!”

MICKEY KAUS:

ABC’s The Note has a thorough and knowing outline of “How the (liberal) Old Media plans to cover the last two weeks of the election” to try to ensure the GOPs do not regain any initiative. …All ABC’s Halperin & Co. left out, as far as I can see, is Point #13: Bury the news about the Secure Fence Act (if Bush doesn’t bury it first!), Point #14: Do not mention the name “Alcee Hastings,” and #15: ‘Keep Foley Alive!’ (though that may no longer be possible, even on NPR).

Plus, continued questions as to what Bush is doing on the fence bill. Seems like an ill-considered straddle to me — a “low profile” signing ceremony sacrifices the benefit of signing the bill with the pro-fence constituency, but as Kaus notes, it’s not as if the Hispanic community won’t know he signed it.

EUGENE VOLOKH notes some humorous copyright overreach.

BILL QUICK explains why he didn’t vote Republican this year by linking this list. An excerpt:

Wild-eyed pork, earmarks, and increasing government size and power.

intentions to put Gonzales and Miers on the Supreme Court.

Failure to engage the strongest enemies of the US, in particular Iran.

Horrible mismanagement of the Iraq occupation.

Passing and signing the Campaign Finance Reform act.

The new trillion dollar entitlement program for Prescription Drugs.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reading the comments lambasting Bill doesn’t make me feel better about the GOP’s current situation. I think that the decision whether to vote for the GOP or not is one that reasonable people, even reasonable pro-war people, can differ on, and Bill is definitely on the right side where the war is concerned. And I’ll ask a question that I often ask of the lefties — do you really think this stuff will win people over?

IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING? Maybe not.

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS regarding British media and the war.

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS: “Using human embryonic stem cells, researchers have cured a Parkinson’s-like disease in rats. Unfortunately, the Parkinson’s cure causes brain tumors.”

I favor research using embryonic stem cells, as I don’t think we know enough to say what will work — and research with embryonic cells might well provide insights that would let us use adult stem cells effectively. But I think it’s being oversold as something that promises near-term cures, as alas it doesn’t.

I like this take on the debate, though:

Because Stem Cells have been politicised left right and sideways.

Right, Embryonic Stem Cells == Baby-killing.

Left, The right want cancer patients to DIE to prove a point.

The research is in the early stages now, and people shouldn’t pretend to more certainty than is there.

DEFENSE TECH’S DAVID AXE joins with Michael Yon in saying that the U.S. military is blowing the information war in Iraq.

ANDREW SULLIVAN CRITICIZES ME for not voting for Harold Ford, Jr., saying that a libertarian would have supported him.

But Ford voted for the detainee military commissions bill, which Sullivan regards as anathema. And he took a hard-line stance on immigration. As for spending and pork, which Sullivan also mentions, both Ford and his opponent, Bob Corker, say they support spending reforms, porkbusters, and increased transparency. Ford also supports public display of the ten commandments, a ban on flag burning, and says he’s closer to Bush than McCain on military interrogations. I don’t understand Andrew’s views on what constitutes libertarianism but this wouldn’t seem to fit. (According to Wikipedia, Ford also supported a ban on same-sex benefits, and a ban on gay marriage, which makes me wonder what, exactly, makes Andrew so enthusiastic — Ford’s a nice guy, but to suggest that he’s more libertarian on the issues is absurd; by Andrew’s somewhat overexcitable standards he’s a pro-torture, homophobic Christianist!)

As for the “outing” business, I’ll admit that Republicans run on opposition to gay marriage, etc. — but so do Democrats (see John Kerry and Ford, above). And deliberately targeting individuals’ sex lives as a form of political blackmail seems to me to be nastier than policy positions with which, alas, most Americans agree.

Unlike Andrew, I’ve actually paid attention to this race, instead of merely forming phantoms of my own imagining. Which is why I voted as I did. In the meantime, I’ll view his comments on politics with increased skepticism, given the ignorance and inattention on display here.

UPDATE: Frank J. prefers the suggestion of reader Brian Gates, below: “An all Frank J. Congress would be awesome! No one could stop me from filibustering!”

I suppose that would be the true libertarian alternative . . . .

DEAN BARNETT: We’re still number one!

America’s Jews were the victims of 68.5% of 2005’s religiously motivated hate-crimes. Even though there are a lot less of us than there are Muslims, we incurred almost 7x more hate-crimes than America’s Muslim population in 2005. I am expecting CAIR to send every Jew in America a sympathy card in the very near future.

Me too.

AND YET, NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE:

Wall Street extended its October rally Monday as investors grew more optimistic about upcoming earnings reports and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will cut capital spending to drive overall returns. The Dow Jones industrials shot up more than 110 points and crossed 12,100 for the first time.

Generally upbeat reports have instilled a new confidence about the future in investors, and allowed them to lay down some bets about the future just half-way through third-quarter earnings season. . . .

Blue chips resumed a three-month rally after stalling Friday; the Dow briefly surpassed 12,100 and reached a new trading high of 12,117.95, eclipsing the old mark of 12,049.51 set last week. Broader market indexes also gained, shrugging off concerns about the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates later this week.

“The picture being painted is pretty easy to suggest that the pressure on the economy from higher oil prices is easing,” said Richard E. Cripps, chief market strategist at Stifel Nicolaus. The price of oil, which fell to lows for the year Friday from its mid-July highs, is making investors more bullish on sectors like retail, which stand to benefit if consumers have more spending money.

In midday trading, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 110.22, or 0.92 percent, to 12,112.59. Blue chips passed 12,000 for the first time last week.

Broader stock indicators also surged. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 8.71, or 0.64 percent, to 1,377.71, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 17.71, or 0.76 percent, to 2,360.01.

I guess “It’s the economy, stupid” only applies when the economy is bad. Or something.

PRAISE FOR PORKBUSTERS, and proposals for spending reform, from George Allen at RedState.

TAEGAN GODDARD: “Political Wire has seen early results of a couple new polls that show surging independent or third party candidates while the major party candidates are losing support. In both cases, the trend is broad enough to turn the independent candidate into a spoiler and completely change the dynamics of the race.”

Could this be a trend? Given the general level of voter disenchantment, I can imagine that it would be. I had some thoughts on this a few months back. And read this, too.

TAMARA K. reports on a Harold Ford. Jr. visit to the shooting range where she works. “That young man stood next to me for near ten minutes and not once did he ask for my vote.”

There’s no answer to Randy Neal’s question in the comments, though: “But did he shoot a tight group?”

ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT, gun control in Australia hasn’t saved any lives:

The report by two Australian academics, published in the British Journal of Criminology, said statistics gathered in the decade since Port Arthur showed gun deaths had been declining well before 1996 and the buyback of more than 600,000 mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns had made no difference in the rate of decline.

The only area where the package of Commonwealth and State laws, known as the National Firearms Agreement (NFA) may have had some impact was on the rate of suicide, but the study said the evidence was not clear and any reductions attributable to the new gun rules were slight.

“Homicide patterns (firearm and non-firearm) were not influenced by the NFA, the conclusion being that the gun buyback and restrictive legislative changes had no influence on firearm homicide in Australia,” the study says. . . .

The significance of the article was not who had written it but the fact it had been published in a respected journal after the regular rigorous process of being peer reviewed, she said.

Politicians had assumed tighter gun laws would cut off the supply of guns to would-be criminals and that homicide rates would fall as a result, the study said. But more than 90 per cent of firearms used to commit homicide were not registered, their users were not licensed and they had been unaffected by the firearms agreement.

Which is, of course, exactly what gun-rights groups predicted.

A DEPRESSING THOUGHT FROM JOHN FUND:

Everyone is speculating about which party will control Congress after next month’s voting. But we may not know for a while. We could see either party pursue the kind of lawsuits that Al Gore unleashed in Florida in 2000 and contest any number of tight races that are within the “margin of litigation.” Recounts and even seating challenges in Congress could stretch on for weeks–another endless election. “We’re waiting for the day that pols can cut out the middleman and settle all elections in court,” jokes the political newsletter Hotline.

He also offers a lengthy roundup of election problems. And you can hear our podcast interview with Fund on election fraud here.

OKAY, so I revealed my vote earlier. Now it’s time for you to weigh in on how you think the 2006 elections should go. Remember, this is how they should go, not a prediction of how they will go. That’s a question for a separate poll.

UPDATE: Okay, with about 6800 votes so far, we’ve got 74% in favor of Republicans keeping both houses, 17% in favor of the Dems taking one house, and 9% in favor of Dems taking both houses. Plus, a complaint about survey design from reader Brian Gates:

We should have as many choices as you gave yourself – could you amend the poll to allow write-ins for Frank J? A Congress with only him would be better than any of the other choices you list, and I don’t mean that as an endorsement of Frank.

It’s hard to argue, in light of recent events.

TOM ELIA looks at this day in history.

Plus, here’s some somewhat more recent history.

LARRY LESSIG ON NET NEUTRALITY: “It’s funny, I hadn’t realized I was a Google tool.”

Me neither. I mean, wouldn’t it pay better?

UPDATE: Matt Sherman responds to Lessig.

NO LOSS OF PERSPECTIVE HERE: “Gay Republicans are as bad as Nazi collaborators.” Mike Godwin, call your office!

UPDATE: Plus, a post on libertarians and bestiality. I’m mentioned, but no Nazi analogies appear.

CLIFF MAY: “What would Ernie Pyle or any other great war correspondent of the past think of CNN’s decision to air video showing snipers targeting U.S. troops in Iraq?”